Keeping Safety On Track

Engineers Eye Traffic At Crossings

"It's just like playing Russian roulette, except you've handed the gun to someone else," said Richard Ray, an administrator for Norfolk Southern.

Safety measures may not prevent every driver from taking risks, but local highway and railroad officials still say they need to install more gates at local railroad crossings.

About 15 local traffic engineers met in Suffolk this week to discuss adding safety features to many of the 473 public railroad crossings in Hampton Roads.

They hope to continue the trend of declining train-related deaths in Virginia. There were 37 crashes at public railroad crossings in Virginia last year, including one fatal accident in Chesapeake. That's down from a peak of 69 crashes in 1993. But 16 of last year's crashes occurred at crossings with gates that lower as a train approaches.

"The hardest thing in the world is trying to control stupidity," says Earl Stitzer, safety improvement manager for the Virginia Department of Transportation. "The public will find a way to travel around the gates."

Stupidity isn't to blame in all cases. Because of the angle of an approaching train, drivers sometimes have a hard time judging its speed. They also forget that the train is wider than the tracks, Stitzer said.

In 1993, a woman died when a train struck the back of her car at a crossing on Airport Road north of Williamsburg. Police said she was behind two cars stopped at a red light and apparently believed she was out of harm's way. The next year, a Williamsburg man died at the same crossing after driving around the lowered gates and colliding with a train, witnesses said.

Virginia has kept its death rate to zero or one fatality a year since the mid-1990s by adding gates and other features to many crossings, Stitzer said. (VDOT does not keep statistics on the number of deaths caused by children playing on or pedestrians trespassing on railroad tracks.)

VDOT has about $8 million in federal safety funding to work with this year. One goal is to increase the number of public crossings with gates. About two out of every five crossings in Hampton Roads have gates.

Another goal is to make sure traffic signals are timed with nearby railroad crossings so drivers don't get stuck on the tracks while stopped at a red light.

But the upgrade process is slow because of the number of government agencies involved.

For example, CSX has been working with city, state and federal officials for more than a year to add gates and improve the driving surface at the Jefferson Avenue crossing near Industrial Park Drive in Newport News. Stitzer said city officials took longer than expected to approve the upgrade. VDOT will probably give CSX permission to proceed with the work in the next two weeks.

"But CSX will need to get the materials and manpower to get this installed," Stitzer said. "Hopefully, we'll see it done by the end of the year."

Dave Schleck can be reached at 247-7430 or by e-mail at dschleck@dailypress.com